Post from the Instructor Network – Excellent read.
Until it hits home, many instructors teach CPR for the cause, the mission, the fact that CPR saves lives, the money, because they like to teach and hundreds of other reasons. Very few teach CPR for selfish reasons like me. I start every class by saying one of the reasons that I teach CPR is so I can surround myself with a community of trained responders who can perform CPR on me! Not that I plan on having another Sudden Cardiac Arrest, but if I do, I want someone to perform CPR on me, effectively, without hesitation and with the knowledge that what they are doing will save my life. Will it work? I sure as hell hope so.
When I had my SCA, I was surrounded by trained professionals who worked their butt off for 6 minutes, to save my life. They had no idea who I was, they didn’t care, all that mattered to them was the fact I was soon to be dead. I hope every student that I teach can perform the way they did. Is that unreasonable to ask? probably. But I do hope that every student that I train, will at the very least, have the basic understanding of how important their actions are when someone is unresponsive and not breathing.
I teach every student the basics of CPR, call for help and push hard and fast on the center of the chest. Whether it’s a Family and Friends class or a Provider class, those two steps are the same, the sequences may be different, there may be some other additional steps, but when it boils down, those two steps are what saves lives, tens of thousands of lives, every year!
80% of Sudden Cardiac Arrests happen at home. The chance that you the instructor or one of your students may have to provide CPR to a family member or friend at home is enormous.
During the 2015 BLS Video the announcer says “One fact about Sudden Cardiac Arrest is 75 to 80 percent of OHCA’s happen at home”
How many instructors pause the video at this point and explain this? Do you tell your students that there are resources on the AHA website to give your family an idea of what you learned today? Do you give them a handout or send them a follow-up email with the links? Do you tell them that what you have learned today could be taught to your entire family at home in about 15 minutes?
You don’t! Why not?
Think about this. Your BLS student goes home and has an SCA and dies because no one in their family knew what to do. What good did the training they received do for anyone. Even something as simple as one of the handouts given to your students when they leave, or an email with a link to one of the AHA video’s, may save a life.
Let’s get technical; Hands-Only (Compression-Only) Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: A Call to Action for Bystander Response to Adults Who Experience Out-of-Hospital Sudden Cardiac Arrest, A Science Advisory for the Public From the American Heart Association Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee, Michael R. Sayre, MD; Robert A. Berg, MD, FAHA; Diana M. Cave, RN, MSN; Richard L. Page, MD, FAHA; Jerald Potts, PhD, FAHA; Roger D. White, MD. (Michael R. Sayre, MD, one of the reasons King County, Washington has the highest OHCA survival rate in the world). This is one document that should be required reading for every instructor. Throw a key point or two at your BLS students during your lectures, “Eliminating the expectation of mouth-to-mouth contact during CPR is likely to improve esthetics and address the expressed concern of potential bystanders about infection.” I have done some research of my own and one of the major “scary points” of CPR has been mouth to mouth, It has been for years, people are afraid of it. It is one of the hurdles we need to overcome. In the same poll was the true or false question, if you’re not breaking ribs you’re not doing good CPR. How many professionals answered this as true? The results would amaze you. One of my other favorite mini lectures is about this. It takes about a minute to give a student a basic anatomy refresher and tell them about cartilage popping sounds. Again it’s amazing to see the light bulb go on.
But remember teach your students, not at them. Whether it’s a BLS class or a Family and Friends, impress on them that everyone needs to learn CPR, let’s make this a generation of instructors that will promote CPR to be the socially normal thing to do, when someone is unresponsive and not breathing. Let’s change the tens of thousands of survivors every year to hundreds of thousands.
One more save is my Why, what’s yours.